Renovations to Bader Hall including new and improved insulation, have reduced heating costs by 60 percent. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

Paper use is being reduced by having fewer printers on campus and by setting the default on those printers to print on both sides of the paper. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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I believe that at Champlain College, we are making progress in making our campus more environmentally sound.

While I want to take this time to pause and celebrate our successes, I do this with a full complement of knowing that we have much more work to do.

Part of my job as sustainability director is to keep an eye on some of the metrics we use to measure our progress. Each of these points is significant for its own merit, but it is the collective power that is probably most meaningful and has the greatest impact.

For me, it goes without saying that the work we are doing will help improve the health and well-being of people and planet. It is also relevant to know that our future students think environmental stewardship on campus is important to them.

In a 2012 survey conducted by the Princeton Review, 68 percent of the 7,445 college applicants surveyed said that having information about a college’s commitment to the environment would affect their decision whether to apply to or attend a school.

So for Champlain, and for many other colleges and universities, our campus environmental work serves multiple purposes.

This is what we’re doing.

We are using less copy paper.

This might seem like a rather insignificant point, but the amount and type of copy paper we use (or don’t use) touches upon natural resources used for the materials, the energy used to make and ship the paper, the energy used to print or to copy, and the waste system that it returns to after use.

Our copy paper reduction (10 percent less than last year and 19 percent less than in 2006) also means we cut our costs for paper by 18 percent in the past year. And we are improving the type of paper used. Now, 82 percent of our standard copy paper contains recycled content (typically 30 percent recycled content), up from 59 percent in the prior year.

What helped us make these shifts? Faculty and students are utilizing our online learning management system for assignments and papers; we are using more centralized printers that have the default setting to duplex (double-side printing); we have more departments moving to paperless systems; and we’ve worked with our vendor to make higher-recycled-content paper the right economical choice.

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Still, we have work to do in this area by continuing to employ electronic options when appropriate.

We have a highwaste diversion rate.

Our good news for this topic is that the overall amount of landfilled trash we are generating is decreasing as our diversion rate (sending materials to be composted and recycled instead) is more than 65 percent. However, at the same time, our total volume of waste generation is increasing. This is likely explained because we have more buildings, more people and more programs on campus than ever before — and with that comes more things being thrown “away.”

During the past several years, our compost collection program has expanded and improved, and we continue to work on having the right infrastructure in place in partnership with educating our community and visitors as to what goes in what bin, or to “sort it out,” as we call it on campus.

We’ve worked with a variety of partners on diverting different streams of waste, from unwanted text books to batteries. Combined with programmatic efforts such as a strong move-out collection program at the end of the year and giving water bottles to new students and employees, we are seeing results. But with every trash dumpster that gets emptied, I know there is more work to be done.

Within eight years we've cut our energy usage by 33 percent.

This in itself is significant, but the fact that we’ve seen these energy savings despite continuing to build new buildings is even more impressive.

Our new buildings on campus, including our LEED-Platinum-certified Perry Hall and our expected LEED-Gold Juniper residence hall, are built with efficiency in mind. We have been fortunate and opportunistic to take advantage of ample aquifers that we are harnessing for geothermal heating and cooling of Perry and Juniper, as well as for future buildings.

At the same time, we continue to make significant investments into our existing buildings, by improving their overall efficiency. Renovating Bader residence hall saved us more than 50 percent in energy costs this year. And yet, we have many buildings to go.

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Similar to our waste-reduction efforts, we combine behavioral aspects in our energy-saving program, through outreach to our campus community, such as our annual Kill-A-Watt Challenge in the residence halls. We’re still tabulating results for this year’s competition, but last year we saw an average of 9 percent electrical reduction during the month of the challenge.

Within campus facilities, we have a long wish list of energy-efficiency projects we’d like to work on, and yet the same old time and money factors often arise. One way we are working on the money aspect is by starting a Green Revolving Fund (GRF). This mechanism, used by several other campuses across the state and the country, finances energy efficiency, renewable energy and other sustainability projects on campus.

The fund will provide capital for special projects conducted by our physical plant department that reduce environmental impact and can repay the fund with cost savings within five years. A portion of these savings are used to support a subsidiary Green Community Fund that finances smaller community-led sustainability projects that might lack monetary savings but are in clear alignment with Champlain College’s sustainability objectives.

The purpose of the Green Revolving Fund is to encourage environmentally sound technologies and practices on our campus. The fund will finance innovative projects that reduce the college’s environmental impact, improve the educational environment and generate financial returns while engaging students, staff, faculty and administrators in the decision-making and implementation process.

We are still capitalizing our fund, expected to be about $100,000, and think this will be an exciting opportunity for current and future donors to the college. We also are signing on the national Billion Dollar Green Challenge, which encourages colleges, universities and other nonprofits to invest a combined total of $1 billion in self-managed revolving funds that finance energy-efficiency improvements.

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Our greenhouse gas emissionsare decreasing.

All of Champlain College’s efforts in addition to other programs and projects on campus have resulted in a 14 percent reduction in our gross greenhouse-gas emissions — even as owned gross square footage of campus has increased.

The majority of our annual greenhouse-gas emissions come from heating, electricity and commuting. During this time, electricity usage has increased, but gas usage and commuting emissions have decreased. We know that as a rural state, transportation issues can be challenging, but we have seen great strides in this realm over the years, much in thanks to our membership with the Campus Area Transportation Management Association (CATMA). We are seeing increased bus ridership, more use of the bike/walk rewards program for employees, and more CarShare Vermont memberships.

Despite these efforts, we know there is plenty of work to be done to encourage alternate ways of getting to campus other than single-occupancy vehicles.

Students are getting involved.

Business students in their corporate social responsibility classes are developing pitches to the college president regarding campus sustainability projects, from installing more water-filling stations to the composting of paper towels; project management students are taking on campus-based projects such as improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure; and ethics and the environment students are digging into the ethical side of campus sustainability work.

These are just a few examples of the ways that students are engaging with our campus environmental efforts within their classes.

I’ve continued to see faculty willing and interested to incorporate these and other projects and topics into their courses so that students have the opportunity to delve into what’s happening on campus.

Although these efforts often have a champion or a team facilitating them, the positive environmental progress we’re seeing at Champlain is the work of our entire community. This, of course, means it is our collective responsibility to continue making progress in the right direction.